


Letters

by dollsome



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:29:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22564030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollsome/pseuds/dollsome
Summary: The summer after their first year at Hogwarts, Harry, Ron, and Hermione endure returning home, being apart, and the troublesome inability to communicate.
Relationships: Hermione Granger & Harry Potter & Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley
Comments: 6
Kudos: 71





	Letters

**Author's Note:**

> I've just begun my first Harry Potter reread in years, so it has inspired me to dust off some of my less awful old fics and put them over here! This one originally dates back to the mid-2000s, but I polished it up a bit for this version. Ahhh, nostalgia! Ahh, a world where tweens could only communicate via owl-dependent post instead of endless social media interaction!
> 
> Also, this definitely made me realize that I am in NEED of that Bronte Sisters Go To Hogwarts AU.

The day after she gets home, Hermione writes two letters.

Harry’s comes first: she asks if he’s enjoying his holiday, and if he’s all right after what happened at the end of the year. She tells him a bit about being home again--that she’s glad to see her parents, but can’t help lamenting the lack of sweets. (She’s grown a little fond of chocolate frogs.) She doesn’t touch on his family, although she’s momentarily tempted to; they’d seemed so wretched at King’s Cross, but he probably doesn’t need to be reminded of that. “I hope things are all right where you are” finally suffices, and that’s the end of that.

Ron is a bit trickier. Hermione discovers at once that she doesn’t know quite what to say to him when they aren’t face-to-face. With Ron, she can’t help suspecting that they need to actually _be_ together. When he’s walking next to her down the corridor or sitting across the table in the Great Hall, all blazing red hair and snarky comments, then she always knows exactly what to say. Here, though, the parchment stares up at her, and she’s at a loss. She finally jots down something reminiscent of Harry’s letter, give or take a few things. She asks Ron about his family, because every idle complaint he throws out about them betrays precisely how much he loves them--it’s not dangerous territory the way it is with Harry. She finishes off asking if he’s played any wizard’s chess lately (the insipidity of this doesn’t fully strike her until later), and reminds him not to forget about his summer homework.

She signs both letters ‘Love from Hermione’ and sends them the Muggle way. Her parents still aren’t quite used to the concept of owls.

Three days pass without replies. She concentrates on summer reading. Mrs. Granger had given her a stack of literary classics and insisted that fiction makes the well-rounded reader, so Hermione tries to resist the lure of her schoolbooks. It’s hard to shake the feeling that made-up stories--and Muggle stories, at that--are a waste of time when she’s still wrapping her mind around an entirely new world, but if you can’t waste time during the summer holidays, her father had pointed out, then when can you?

She makes her way through _Jane Eyre_ easily enough; she likes it, but not enough to stop reviewing the details of each letter over and over in her mind. Jane’s awful relatives make her wish she had written something more encouraging to Harry. As she’s discovering herself, one summer can feel like an eternity. Mr. Rochester, meanwhile, is even more strange and exhausting than Ron (to be fair, Ron is funnier), though that doesn’t stop Jane from bantering endlessly with him and liking it. Hermione thinks perhaps she’ll understand that more when she’s older, assuming her older self has any time for all that, which she likely won’t. All her musings over whether Charlotte Bronte might have been a witch stay mysteries now that she can’t hurry to the Hogwarts library whenever a question blooms in her brain.

By the time a week has passed, she’s moved onto _Wuthering Heights_. Once the creepy beginning passes, she can’t help thinking it a little ridiculous. Her mother described it as a great romance. Hermione is no expert, as the girls at school never got tired of reminding her back before she got her Hogwarts letter, but banging one’s head against a tree doesn’t seem like the best indicator of true love.

And then something dawns on her, sudden and horrifying.

“Mum,” she says, as casually as she can, over breakfast, “do you think that maybe people could get the wrong idea if you signed your letters ‘Love from’?”

“What are you talking about?” Mrs. Granger asks a bit distractedly, bringing Hermione a cup of green tea. “You always sign your letters ‘Love from.’”

Mr. Granger grunts a request for more coffee at the other end of the table.

“It stains your teeth,” Mrs. Granger reminds him.

“Do allow me my one weakness, dear,” he requests, never so much as glancing away from the morning paper.

“But,” Hermione says, a bit louder, “I’ve only ever written letters to family. If it was _boys_ \--do you think maybe then they’d get the wrong idea?”

Mr. Granger shoves down the paper. It rustles indignantly.

“Boys?” Mrs. Granger asks, perfectly composed. “You mean Harry and Ron?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it depends on the sorts of boys they are,” Mrs. Granger says. “I haven’t met them, so I really can’t be sure.”

Hermione frowns a little as she considers it. “I don’t think it would bother Harry. He’s quite levelheaded. He’s mature for his age about that sort of thing.”

“And Ron?” Mrs. Granger asks smoothly.

Hermione’s not quite sure what to say. “Well, I think--I think perhaps _he_ might overreact, or read something into it. Although he shouldn’t, of course. It would be completely immature. It’s just that he can be so _maddening_ sometimes.”

Mr. and Mrs. Granger catch each other’s eyes.

“Uh oh,” Mr. Granger says.

Mrs. Granger mercifully pours him a second cup of coffee.

Hermione, who gets the feeling she doesn’t want to know what they’re talking about, marches upstairs and begins to outline a new pair of letters.

Practice makes perfect, after all.

+

Ron’s not much of a letter-writer, and never has been, but all the same, he scrawls out two letters a few days after the summer holidays have started. One’s for Harry and one’s for Hermione. They aren’t much--“How’re you holding up with those awful Muggles?”, “I hope you haven’t started your homework yet; that’s mental”--but he still feels like he should. He’s never had anybody to write to before, not really. He includes an invitation to come stay at the Burrow in Harry’s, and thinks about it in Hermione’s but doesn’t. It just seems a little weird, is all, what with her being a girl. His brothers’d probably all take that completely the wrong way. And besides, it’s not like he lives in a bloody inn. There’s only so many people that can fit into this house. Hermione would probably wind up having to stay with Ginny, and this summer, he wouldn’t wish that on anybody. Even someone who’s probably already _finished_ her homework.

Ginny has taken to holding the post hostage until Mr. and Mrs. Weasley will allow her her own broom, but that’s not even the worst of it. Oh, no. Ginny’s talked about Harry more than Ron has, which is a bit eerie when one considers that Harry is Ron’s best friend, whereas Ginny has only seen him twice. She’s _obsessed_. A few days after he’s sent off the first two letters, he writes another one telling Harry about this. He forgets about it and leaves it on the kitchen table, though, and Ginny finds it. She makes a nightmare out of the whole thing, as usual, and ultimately, he’s not able to send it at all, on account of the fact that she’s fed it to the garden gnomes.

“Harry’ll be terrified of you, the way you ramble on all the time!” Ron tells her furiously. “It’s right mental, it is!”

Ginny bursts into tears, and he spends the rest of the day washing and sorting the whole family’s dirty socks as punishment.

A week goes by, and he hasn’t got replies from Harry _or_ Hermione. This is explained when Errol shows up one morning with the letters still tied to his leg, looking distinctly ruffled and faintly cross-eyed.

Still, Ron can’t help feeling a little disappointed that neither of them have written to him on their own.

He decides to give it another go. He writes each of them a new letter, including in Hermione’s that she’s probably finished her homework by now (and that this, of course, is completely sick) and in Harry’s that he’d tried to write him, but Ginny’d fed it to the gnomes. He doesn’t include what had been in that letter, though he’s not quite sure why. It’d probably just freak Harry out, is all. He’s watching out for him. That’s what best friends do.

He tries to get Percy to let him borrow Hermes, but Percy’s a big git about it, as usual.

“Use Errol,” he says through a crack in his door; he won’t let Ron in all the way, because the idiot’s gone completely bonkers. “That’s what the rest of the family is supposed to do.”

“If I use Errol,” Ron says impatiently, “he’ll probably die in midair and fall on some kids playing out in their back garden or something. D’you really want that on your conscience, Perce?”

“He will not,” Percy sniffs. “Now if you please, go away. I have work to do.”

“What _are_ you doing, anyway?” Ron stands on tiptoe trying to see past Percy and into the room.

“Nothing!” Percy barks, and slams the door so hard it hits Ron in the nose.

By now, he almost wishes he lived with Harry’s family instead. His great purple oaf of an uncle couldn’t possibly be as annoying.

The letters take up residence on his desk next to the new Martin Miggs comic and stay there throughout Errol’s convalescence.

“Why can’t you deliver letters, huh?” Ron glumly asks Scabbers. He’s asleep, as usual. “At least then you’d be good for something.”

One eye pops open, and the rat twitches slightly, as though offended.

“Didn’t mean it,” Ron says hastily, and pats him lightly on the side. His fur’s all foul and gristly, just like everything else about him, but still, Ron feels a little bad. It’s not as though Scabbers asked to be completely pathetic.

Still, this doesn’t help him out with his letter problem, and Harry and Hermione have yet to write to him. He starts wondering if maybe they’ve got other friends at home that he’d never heard about. The thought makes him angry. Where’s the justice, if they’ve got _friends_ and he’s stuck here with his mad siblings?

“Hey, Ron,” Ginny asks one day, “who’s Hermione?”

“You know who Hermione is,” Ron says crossly. “I’ve told you. She’s my friend at Hogwarts.”

“Does she love you?”

“ _What_?” Ron squawks. “Where would you get a stupid idea like that?”

“I read it,” Ginny says vaguely.

“Read it?” Ron asks. Suspicion begins to creep through him. “What do you mean?”

“‘Dear Ron,’” Ginny begins, her voice ridiculously breathy and not at all like Hermione’s, “‘How have your holidays been so far? I _do_ hope you haven’t forgotten your homework! But even more, I hope you haven’t forgotten _me_! Looooove, Hermi—’”

“I’m going to _kill you_!”

“You’ll have to catch me first!”

“Damn it, Ginny, give me my bloody letters!”

“RONALD BILIUS WEASLEY! _WHAT WAS THAT LANGUAGE?_ ”

“Mum, Ginny’s been taking my letters!”

“Ginny’s been taking everyone’s letters! That does not give you the right to use such foul language in my house!”

“ _Looooooooooove, Hermione!_ ”

In the end, Ron doesn’t get to read his letters, as they all wind up torn to shreds thanks to the vicious game of tug-of-war he’d gone through to get them. He studies the largest remaining piece. It reads ‘Love from Hermione’ – which is, he decides, totally and entirely different.

+

As soon as his trunk has been locked in the cupboard under the stairs, taking every trace of Hogwarts along with it, Harry sits down to write to Ron and Hermione.

He’s not sure exactly what to say, but this doesn’t bother him very much, because he knows that’s not the point. Being here again, with Dudley’s brainless chuckling at the television and Uncle Vernon’s terrible, booming voice and Aunt Petunia shrieking commands at him every few minutes, he needs to write their names. To see their handwriting: Hermione’s perfect penmanship and Ron’s hasty, friendly scrawl. That way, with the words in front of him (Hermione probably still fretting about his encounter with Voldemort--he pictures her wringing her hands anxiously; Ron telling him about Fred and George’s latest antics--he can practically hear him chuckling)--that way, he’ll have proof of them. This past year was real, and there’ll be another one just like it. He’s just got to survive the summer, that’s all.

To have a letter from each of them will be enough to hold onto for now.

Uncle Vernon finds him tying the letters to Hedwig’s leg and puts a stop to it at once.

“Do you really think I’m going to let those--those _freaks_ send messages to my home? Guess again, boy!” Hedwig’s cage is padlocked by the time the sun sets that night. The letters sit, abandoned, on Harry’s desk.

The day after he’s returned to Privet Drive, Aunt Petunia wakes him at seven and orders that he come downstairs to make breakfast.

“Aunt Petunia?” he asks from where he stands over the frying pan.

“What?” she snaps. There’s the soft, slightly musical clang of glasses as she retrieves them from the cupboard above the sink and sets them onto the counter.

“Did my mum ever show you anything she learned?” he asks the eggs as they fry. The words sound stupid when he hears them aloud, but he hasn’t got anyone else to ask. And Aunt Petunia, he figures, has no one else to tell. “You know, at school?”

A glass falls to the floor and shatters with a crash. One shard lands inches from Harry’s bare foot.

“Go back to your room,” she orders, her voice trembling.

Harry’s heartbeat is loud in his ears. For once, he’d be glad to obey, but something makes him ask, “Should I help you clean that up?”

“No!” Aunt Petunia shrieks. The sound rings through the empty kitchen. It reminds Harry a little of the glasses clinking.

“No,” she says again, more composed. She stares fixedly at the remains of the cup on the floor, arms crossed in a way that makes her look more frail than angry. “Go back up to your room.”

They begin staying away from him, after that.

A week goes by and there’s no letter from Ron or Hermione. They’re just busy, Harry reasons. They’ve got lives to settle back into. Families. Friends, probably. It’s not like this for them. It’s not like here.

Hedwig doesn’t like spending all her time caged. It’s not in her nature. Uncle Vernon complains about the noise she makes when he’s sitting at the head of the table at dinner, but seems content just to cast shifty-eyed glances at Harry almost everywhere else. He starts to feel a bit like he doesn’t exist, or like he’s something dark and horrible. The Phantom of Privet Drive, he thinks, but it doesn’t seem all that clever or funny when he’s got no one to tell it to.

He contemplates writing Ron and Hermione again and then sending the letters through the post, but he doubts he’d be able to get that past the Dursleys either. They know very well he’s got no one ‘normal’ to write to. Instead, he spends his time sitting in the living room and thinking about nothing in particular while Dudley watches TV.

“This program’s stupid,” Harry says one afternoon, not because he wants to watch anything better but because he’s bored and tired. At this point, any change sounds like a good one.

“You’re stupid,” Dudley grunts.

“Wow,” Harry says. “That’s really clever.”

Dudley shifts in his chair, turning to glare at Harry. “You think you can change it?” He lifts the remote from the end table and dangles it over Harry’s head, laughing to himself.

“I reckon so,” Harry replies evenly.

Dudley stops laughing. “Go ahead and try.”

Harry puts on the most sinister expression he can manage. It’s not hard, all things considered. “Abra cadabr—”

“Aaaugh!” Dudley lets out a strangled scream. The remote goes flying into Aunt Petunia’s favorite vase. “Mum! _Mum_!”

Harry spends the afternoon cleaning the upstairs bathroom. As he scrubs the rings around the bathtub, trying to make them disappear, his mind falls back on Ron and Hermione. He can’t help wondering what they’re doing right now. He imagines Ron laughing with his brothers, and Hermione smiling at her parents as she sits down to dinner.

They’ll write him soon, he decides as he scrubs a bit harder. They’re his best friends, after all.


End file.
